Daddy Love le Joyce Carol Oates
Robbie Whitcomb is the beloved five-year-old son of Dinah and Whit, and when he is literally ripped from his mother’s hand by a stranger in the car park of a huge shopping mall, it is the start of a long nightmare. Daddy Love believes he has rescued the boy from a neglectful mother, but then Daddy Love comes up with a million excuses for his unspeakable cruelty. As Robbie, or Gideon as he has been renamed, grows up, he becomes aware that he is not the first boy Daddy Love has taken. Meanwhile, his parents languish in a brutal netherworld, balanced precariously between desperate grief and determination to find their son. While the redemption in ‘Room’ came from a young boy whose abducted mother was determined to protect him, ‘Daddy Love’ is all the more chilling because Gideon’s only experience of love comes from the man who is also brutally abusing him. There is very little redemption here; it is a truly bleak read.
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The Things We Know Now le Catherine Dunne
Patrick and Ella Grant lead a charmed existence. Patrick fell apart after his first wife died suddenly, but after meeting Ella he has managed to get back on track. If Patrick’s grown up daughters are not unanimously ecstatic at his newfound happiness, he resolves to bear with it. An unexpected pregnancy cements the couple’s happiness, and son Daniel grows up in a household where he is adored. At 14, Daniel is an accomplished artist and musician, and seems mature beyond his years. When the worst imaginable thing happens, the family is utterly devastated. A compassionate writer at the best of times, Dunne handles the issue of teenage suicide in a calm and considered way, while never underplaying the calamitous effect on the people left to grieve. In perhaps the novel’s only shortcoming, she goes a long way towards explaining the ‘why’ in this particular case, but for many grieving relatives this is the one question they never manage to answer. A moving and not always easy read, this is an excellent novel that deserves a wide audience.
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